If you’ve been listening in on the debate over nuclear energy, by now you’ve heard the Sierra Club, FOE, or Greenpeace recite one of their favorite incorrect mantras: “There are no safe levels of radiation.” Simply put, they’re wrong. As a matter of fact, you’re surrounded by safe levels of radiation right now as you read this post.
The global average radiation dose a person receives is about 240 millirem from safe sources of radiation. So if there are no safe levels of radiation then why isn’t every human being on the planet dropping dead from radiation poisoning? To put that in perspective, in my first two years working in the nuclear power industry I received about 60 millirem, just a fraction of what anyone else receives from natural sources. The fact is there ARE safe levels of radiation. Here are a few examples of safe levels of radiation i.e. the kind that are all around you.
Granite
Granite naturally contains Uranium. The byproduct of the slow decay of Uranium is Radon gas. That means that your shiny new counter top and tile floor are both natural sources of radiation. While Radon is the largest contributor to your annual dose, Granite is only 10-20 parts per million Uranium meaning your dose from that counter top and floor will be very low.
Marble
Another very expensive and decorative stone, Marble gives off the same radioactive gasses as Granite. An interesting fact is that radiation levels in parts of the US Capitol building, built almost entirely of Marble and Granite, are about 55 times higher than levels standing at the fence line of a US nuclear plant. So the next time Ed Markey tells you the radiation from nuclear plants is dangerous, remember that he sits inside a giant radioactive dome for a living. Of course despite what he’ll tell you, these levels are entirely safe.
Sleeping Next to Your Husband or Wife
Your significant other is full of small amounts of radioactive Potassium 40, a beta radiation emitter. Sleeping next to this person annually will expose you to a mere 2 millirem of radiation, about twice the amount of radiation people living within a few miles of the Three Mile Island plant received when Unit 2 experienced a partial meltdown in 1979. Isn’t it amazing that according to Greenpeace, a “radiological catastrophe” happens in your bed twice every year?
Flying
The friendly skies are just full of Cosmic Radiation. When you’re in the air, you have less atmospheric shield protecting you from the radiation of the sun and other stars. In fact, the average airline pilot receives 250 millirem of radiation annually, almost twice that of the average worker at a nuclear power plant!
Smoke Detectors
Every house has them and these little life savers are also giving off radiation. Smoke detectors contain Americium-241 which is a gamma and alpha radiation emitter. Don’t worry, those smoke detectors are only giving you about 0.01 millirem.
Exit Signs
Many exit signs are full of Tritium, a weak radioactive isotope of Hydrogen. When mixed with certain chemicals, tritium will light up so that an exit sign will illuminate in the event of a power failure. For some reason, the Sierra Club and The Union of Concerned Lawyers Scientists want you to think that we should shut down Vermont Yankee because of a tritium leak (that has been fixed). I guess these same groups will now lobby to shutdown every library, hospital, school, and museum that uses tritium in exit signs.
Salt Substitute
Trying to cut down on your sodium intake? Why not replace that sodium chloride table salt with mildly radioactive potassium chloride salt substitute. That psuedo-salt contains traces amounts of beta radiation emitting Potassium 40. Of course this won’t hurt you, but too much salt in your diet certainly will.
Image Credit
Americium Smoke Detector courtesy of Flickr user topquark22 under the CC license.
113 Comments
Excellent points, but you forgot the second largest contributor – Medical sources.
http://depletedcranium.com/on-lnt-and-nuclear-energy/ was on the same topic (and I am very fond of their charts).
Medical dose and Radon will both get their own dedicated articles. They’re too important to cover in passing.
You also forgot about radioactive waste. Its extremely dangerous and according to United States Environmental Protection Agency standards, it needs to be closely watched for 10,000 years… Uranium is a scarce resource, its supply is estimated to last only for the next 30 to 60 years depending on the actual demand.
I hope by “an engineer working in the nuclear industry” you mean you’re the guy who maintains the vending machines at a nuclear plant or something like that because your complete lack of understanding for the dangers of radioactivity would otherwise be frightening.
Phil,
As someone who works around radiation, and someone who’s life may very well have been saved by a much larger dose of medical radiation, I can tell you that I have the utmost respect for, not fear of, radiation. That’s why I make it my business to study and understand it.
Now Jack! Shame on you! Trying to confuse people with factual information.
You are well aware that the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and their comrades in arms have no use for facts!
That is unless those facts happen to support one of their usually silly positions anyway.
Whatever was I thinking.
According to Fred Mettler, quoted by Gwyneth Cravens in “Power to Save the World”, a “seminal event” occurred around 2006, as the dramatically increasing average US citizen’s medical imaging dose now exceeds all other sources. The medical imaging dose has increased 600% since 1980. The National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) website has the updated pie chart
http://www.ncrponline.org/images/160_pie_charts/Fig1-1.pdf
which is from: Report No. 160 – Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the Population of the United States (2009)
According to various reports linked to on the NCRP website, a lot of the “medical” imaging is useless, either because the doctors are not up on the latest thinking about it, or because as they practice “defensive” medicine to protect themselves from lawsuits, they order tests that are not medically indicated. A Massachusetts study found 1/3 of the scans were inflicted on patients because doctors are protecting themselves from lawyers. The latest study they are touting shows “20 to 50 % of high-tech scans like CT and PET should not have been done because their results did not help diagnose ailments or treat patients”….
Apparently, we are almost glowing in the dark because doctors are afraid of lawyers.
The irrational fear of radiation from the nuclear industry and the blithe acceptance of whatever wastes including radioactivity that the fossil fuel industry puts out looks even more insane in this context.
The fact that it is so prevalent is medicine should be evidence enough that radiation shouldn’t be blindly feared. If I were to get isotopic treatment I wouldn’t even be able to get into work because I would set off the rad monitors before I got within 100 feet of the gate.
It’s crazy how protected workers are at plants are more protected than basically anyone else at their job. The sad thing is because there is a stigma, nothing will ever change.
Doctors are all about 2 things: Making money. Not getting sued (keeping their money).
My wife and I are facing the same ridiculous thinking when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth. People don’t care about the numbers and fact, they care about how they feel about the topic. Sad but true
Cell phones? They have to be showering my brain with radiation.
Cell phones emit non-ionizing radiation, which as far as anyone can tell, is harmless.
if you wanna learn more look up cnet reviews. they did tests that suggest cell phones can cause cancer, this using over a period of 10 years or longer. But it is not conclusive. the site will also allow you to see examples SAR levels for different cell phones. the highest on that level is motorola v195s at 1.6 watts per kilogram. canada will allow max 1.6, europe 2 and U.S will only sell device if under 1.6. check it out!
How very true. A couple years back I received a total of three treatments of various doses of I-131 (largest single dose was ~27 mCi), and set off the detectors on the way in to base over a week later when I came off convalescent leave.
I heard a story from a Radiation Protection Technician once about a plant worker whose girlfriend received isotope treatment. The isotopes leave the body as sweat, moisture in the breath, basically any fluids. The worker set off the rad monitors when he went to work the next day. It was found that his…midsection…was contaminated.
So I am still safe to fire my tritium-sighted Kimber Compact 1911 in .45 ACP. Whew!
That depends entirely on where it’s pointed of course, but you are correct to assume the tritium site is no threat.
The U.S. Capitol Building is mildly radioactive.
I used to joke around with my coworkers about sending a dosimeter to Ed Markey to measure his dose from the Capitol Building and flights back to his district so as to compare it to my dose from the power plant.
I completely agree. The organizations that are in opposition to nuclear power for example have learned to use fear over facts and annecdotal sob stories to win over the support of the uneducated for their political position. Most of the green movement was taken over by socialists and communists years ago.
Thank you for a very factual presentation.
Mike
There is a growing faction within the Green movement that is now pronuclear. Some of the folks who frequent this site are among them. Even the co-founder of Greenpeace is now pronuclear. As time goes on, more and more greens will realize how big the benefits are and how manageable the drawbacks are.
What about microwaves? I can remember my mom telling me not to stare into them when I was kid. Anything to that?
Microwaves also give of non-ionizing radiation (not the nuclear kind). They’re more similar to radio waves. The only possible danger of putting your head close is a bunch of microwaves escape the oven and hit your eye and boiling the water in it. I doubt that’s even possible though.
Wow, that sounds awful. I’d say it’s not possible. In defiance of my mother’s wishes, I’ve been staring into microwaves for almost 30 years, and both of my eyes are still intact
The best “over-the-counter” radiation source used to be Coleman camping lantern mantles. They would really register on a hand-held radiation detector. A few years ago I bought one, but the newer mantles don’t contain the same radioactive substances. Then there is the old Fiestaware dinner plates. Those plates also worked pretty good for testing a rad detector. I believe uranium was used in the glaze for the dinner ware. Lastly, lets not forget that the average coal-fired power plant releases much more radiation to the environment than a similarly sized nuclear plant.
Everything is radioactive so I don’t know if you really have any point in your argument. This is not even an argument. This says nothing about atomic energy being good or bad. Absolutely nothing. Spouting facts doesn’t make an argument true if the facts are unrelated to anything that the problem or issue has.
So the fact that you get a higher dose of radiation from working as a pilot, living near a coal plant or getting an x-ray than you’d get from working in a nuclear power plant doesn’t mean anything? I think there’s no doubt that people should avoid dangerous amounts of radiation, but the point is that the extent that people go to avoid nuclear power plants when they’re obviously not a significant source of radiation is a little insane. I mean, if you’re really that worried about such small amounts of radiation, you should build a lead box in your basement and never leave.
Spouting (or stating) facts that -are- related to the argument does tend to support or undermine it. It is not whether something is or isn’t radioactive that is important, it is HOW radioactive it is. Water is dangerous, you can drown in it, but we all know that water is generally safe.
@ nick
Yes, how radioactive is the exact point. Because of shielding and mandatory precautions the radioactivity coming from a nuclear power plant is below the level we get from normal activities in our lives. The Simpsons have it totally wrong.
Since I’m pretty sure this is my brother posting (we both use StumbleUpon and this sounds exactly like his style of writing): Charles, you are an idiot. Especially since you are extraordinarily fond of “spouting facts” (from Wikipedia)
Great article, Jack; I’ve just sent it to my mother who constantly “worries about my exposure to radiation” in the lab.
I’m a big fan of CANDU, especially if it’s gotta go somewhere like Pakistan or Argentina (no offense meant)
@Alex, now that is an excellent comment—we certainly welcome sibling rivalries here
.
Tsinghua University in China has a “pebble bed” high efficiency reactor designed to maximize heat production – huge amounts of heat energy output for a smaller fuel charge, smaller waste product for a given energy output! No weaponizable byproducts either! These smaller less elaborate low pressure gas cooled reactors are cheaper to build and modular in conception. Somewhere in the world, there exists a reactor that yields little waste that is dangerous to humans for only 100 years – Thorium bed reactors from India! More efficient? Americans accustomed to 30 year old American nuclear technology fear it for good cause, but there are brighter, more enlightened nuclear designs in this world, and they will prevail, even through the hegimomious, xenophobic propagandized American point of view, and become power source for greater civilization in the 21st century – but not in America where the best education is taught in schools rated 32nd in the world by our own President! Fear radiation and nuclear waste from American style reactors and fear the effect of “free nuclear power” to nations who build better reactors and use them to produce products we buy with expensive “oil based American dollars” We are doomed by our lack of real education, and restraint in our lifestyles to Third World conditions in the next few decades forced upon us by our oil addiction and lack of good schooling. Asians far exceed Americans in both education and Scientific research. We once led the world, we paused to catch our breath, we now lag Asia and by a quite a few laps! Radiation is not the leat of our concerns is it?
The potential of Energy from thorium was discovered something like 45 years ago, but apparently this approach was disparaged by the US Govt because that type of reactor did not contribute to the production of weapons grade plutonium. Can’t say that there wasn’t a good reason to go down that path.
Bananas and Brazil nuts are two examples of foods that are mildly radioactive. In fact, most, if not all, food is radioactive to some small degree.
Jack – An article about radiation in medicine and something about overdoses –
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100330/ap_on_bi_ge/us_radiation_scans_fda
I love your article. I will bookmark and send it to friends who would find it interesting.
However, I do have one question…
When you said “global average radiation dose” did you mean ANNUALLY or over the period of a LIFETIME?
240 millirem is annual, but there are huge variations, depending on the geology of the region being considered. Tellingly, areas with high background radiation levels show no increase in cancer levels.
Nice article, I worked in commercial Nuclear Power for 25 years as a contractor (refuel outage Valve maintenance).
I’ve done 70 outages at more than 35 plants (many repeats).
I have a lifetime occupational exposure of 17,000 mrem, much of it received from my early years in the industry. In later years my annual exposure averaged 100 mrem, partly due to the NRC’s tightening the dose limits as a result of the BEIR committee’s recommendations in the early 90′s.
The BEIR committee (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation committee) concluded after much study that there wasn’t enough data to determine a safe level of low level
radiation exposure.
To be very conservative the NRC reduced the annual permissible occupational exposure from 12,000 mrem to 5,000 mrem.
They also empathized that the plants reinforce the ALARA principle.
ALARA meaning keeping exposure As Low As Reasonably Achievable.
I was an intregal part of our training as rad workers.
We practiced this by using the tools of Time, Distance and Shielding.
This involved mock up training to reduce time in a rad zone, keeping away from sources of radiation unless your job required it and using lead blanket shielding where needed.
As a result individual exposure has been greatly reduced in recent years.
As a matter of fact plants plan for a certain level of exposure (man rems) before
a planned outage and the ability to keep below those levels partly determine
the the high annual INPO ratings all plants strive for.
INPO is the Institute of Nuclear Plant Operators, a sort of industry “police force”,
independent of the NRC.
Consistently low INPO numbers can cause a plant to lose
it’s operating license.
ive had 5 ctscan and im worried about the radtion can u help me please am i going to get cancer from this
Great site & article Jack! Love to see the people who knows about nuclear sciences and tells it to the other people.
I do my masters in Synchrotron Radiation Based Sciences, in Sweden.
Well of course, the point is not the danger to the workers at the nuclear plants, they are American, of course they will have the best protection available. What people are worried about is what happens to the nuclear waste, sinking it into the ocean is not the way to go, nor is shipping it to third world countries, and once Uranium is buried it takes millions of years to loose its ionizing radiation, it is obvious that scientists are thinking far into the future.
Then as Angi mentioned it is not even as if we have unlimited resources in Uranium, at current rates of consumption it may last 30-60 years, that is at current rates of consumption, if nuclear fission became our power of choice how would this “current rate of consumption” look like?
“After an antinuclear indoctrination in college, he awoke in the real world to realize that nuclear energy holds the key to energy independence”
what real world would that be? not the one I would choose myself.
apart from avoiding the most important parts of the nuclear power debate this list is arrogant and condescending please go back to the drawing-boards Mr.Gamble
WOW…
Well, at least John is honest enough to admit that he chooses not to live in the real world.
Pot, Kettle, kettle, pot. Not that the kettle is even black as far as I can see. This sort of moral panic has no place in rational argument.
I don’t see much from you other than generic rhetoric. Do you have somthing technical to add here or would you like to read Mother Goose?
Hey John!
You have an interesting point of view, but it looks like you haven’t read through all of the posts here. Keep reading and your issues are addressed. However, I’d bet that many anti-nukes would prefer to revert to an eighteenth century standard of living rather than take the risks that making progress entails .
Nice straw-man argument
I’m a technical guy, so admitedly I had to Google “straw-man argument.” You’re welcome to point out any incorrect information in the post. Of course if you think these examples are out of context or somehow irrelevant, then by all means enlighten us.
I don’t think that Nick knows what a straw-man argument is either. (I’ve noticed that most people who frivolously throw around the “straw man” accusation don’t actually understand what it means.)
Just because the claims of anti-science propaganda farms such as the Sierra Club, FOE, and Greenpeace are easily refuted by a simple application of a few scientific facts, that does not make Jack’s article a “straw man” argument.
For Jack to have set up a straw man, he would need to have misrepresented the position of the Sierra Club, FOE, and Greenpeace in such a way as to make their position much easier to tear down. So, let’s see whether Jack has misrepresented their claims.
Sierra Club: “there is no safe level of exposure to radiation” is a claim that is parroted by many Sierra Club organizations — e.g., in Pennsylvania and in Canada.
Friends of the Earth: “there is no safe level of radiation” (PDF, page 2)
Greenpeace: “there is no safe limit for exposure to radiation”
Nope, no straw man here. Jack simply attacked their position head on and demonstrated that these groups ignore or fail to understand common experience. We are literally bathed in radiation every day of our lives from sources that all sane people would consider to be “safe.”
Well done Mr Mays. A fine bit of digging.
Also;
Last November, I had the [non] pleasure of attending a lecture delivered by Helen Caldicott (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Caldicott) and by the end of the lecture was ready to strangle her. My girlfriend held me back [she is a biologist, bless her]. Helen demonstrated everything that was wrong with the non-scientific, anti-nuclear community; making up numbers for half-lives, combining nuclear power with nuclear weapons, discussing “How easy it would be for any student at this university to go on across the river [to our research reactor, a SLOWPOKE] and make a weapon of mass destruction” and overusing/misquoting the “Physicists have known sin.” statement my Oppenheimer.
No real point here, I know; it just frustrates me that I, as an engineer, was prepared to go to their argument/discussion to listen to what they had to say, and discovered that they had failed to listen to anything that science had said.
I thought going would keep me honest. It kept me angry.
@Alex – that really is the shame of it, in my opinion. I’m fully willing to listen to someone with solid evidence or information that I am not aware of; but I find that the anti-nuclear position has few, if any, of those types of arguments.
Quote from Will , ‘However, I’d bet that many anti-nukes would prefer to revert to an eighteenth century standard of living rather than take the risks that making progress entails .’
I believe that in general the greenpeace, sierra club and similar points of view are not so much that they want to live in caves (no parking place for the Audi) but that everyone else should. The Al Gore viewpoint – ‘Do as I say, not as I do’.
No, not Audis.
As George Carlin observed, self-important environmentalists (members of Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc.) are “white bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths, people trying to make the world safe for their Volvos.”
They drive Volvos, unless Al Gore is their father, in which case, they transport their drugs in a hybrid Toyota Prius.
To be honest, I have to disagree with the title.
Of course there is a lot of radiation around us and, in general, were used to live with it.
But the basis problem in this discussion is that the correlation between radiation and negative effects on the human body (“to get sick”) is only based on statistics.
So a group of people receives ### mSv of radiation and %%% persons shows negative effects. Based on statics we can calculated an acceptable level of radiation.
But we can never do it the other way round. When we see somebody dropping dead of getting sick, by examining his/her body we can never state that the dead/sickness is caused by radiation.
So Jack asked the question ”why isn’t every human being on the planet dropping dead from radiation poisoning?” The correct answer is, there are a lot of people dropping dead from radiation but we can never prove the radiation is the cause of their dead.
So there are no save levels but there are acceptable levels.
Gerard Roozen (in his comment) stated:
“The correct answer is, there are a lot of people dropping dead from radiation but we can never prove the radiation is the cause of their dead.”
This is wrong, if you can never prove radiation was cause of their deaths how can you say there are a lot of people dropping dead from radiation? There are lots of people becoming ill (radiation or not) and we can prove whether excess radiation plays a major part in their illness/death from a diagnosis or autopsy. Radiation poisoning has its symptoms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning
In reality, there isn’t a lot of people dropping dead due to radiation.
Safe levels of radiation means exactly the same thing as acceptable levels of radiation, the only acceptable level of radiation is a safe one. And by safe it means radiation which would not increase the risk of illness compared to a normal level radiation (no such thing as no radiation, radiation is everywhere as the article says).
And why the title? Talk about the article. “Safe levels of radiation” is a better title because it directly contrasts to the green’s dumb argument “There are no safe levels of radiation.”
my preference would be photoelectric type smoke detectors because they don’t contain radioactive materials.:”
Also you forgot,,,, the more you get in a yr by all this environmental exposure the More you could get, cancer , Leukemia etc ,, Radiation NEVER leaves your body ,, we are being slowly exterminated ,,,,,,,,,NO SAFE LEVEL WITH RADIATION,,, PERIOD
ive had 5 ctscan in 3 years and im worried about the raditon can someone help me please who works in that aear
I agree with you 100% that people are VERY misinformed about radiaton and nuclear power. Did you know that the fly ash produced from coal plants is more radioactive than nuclear waste from your average american built nuclear fission uranium core power plant? Or that it would take rougly 1000 train cars full of coal to produce the same amount of energy as ONE train car of uranium? And that uranium 238 (unenriched uranium) is abundant throughout the earths crust, for every ton of raw dirt or earth crust you scoop up, it contains usually 1/1000 parts uranium? Given the sheer amount of earth crust we have, excluding uranium mines, thas alot of uranium to use up. Even our universe’s suns are just huge nuclear reactors whos secrets we have yet to unlock. The United States even uses Uranium Depleted tank shells (highly radioactive) to kill its enemies, and US nuclear fission power plants supply the eastern sea board with over 30% of its total power output. Nuclear power provides a cheap way for 3rd world countries to produce electricity, and the UN builds and maintains reactors in said 3rd world countries across the globe.
I think its a shame that weve let a couple misinformed idiots who cant tell the differnce between a weapon and a power plant stop people from seeing nuclear power’s true potential. No matter what we do, the demand for electricity is far too great for renewable power sources, and with rising populations, urbanization, and indutrialization around the world, the problem of genuine clean energy supplies is only going to get bigger.
Nuclear power isn’t perfect, it isn’t totally clean, and it’s not 100% cost effective. But its the best we have, and its a step in the right direction.
P.S power plants dont explode. Uranium only combusts into a nuclear explosion if it is weaponsgrade, and comes into contact with sevral pounds of plutonium. Good luck finding weapons grade uranium and some plutonium before the CIA and SAS hunt you down. -Jacob Sisson
Stars are fusion engines, and don’t produce ionizing radiation. The only reason H-bombs create prodigious amounts of radioactive fallout is that they use a fission reaction to initiate fusion. Corrections solicited…
Heres my random rant on anti-radiation hippies. For what its worth.
If any of you greenpeace fans actually paid attention in freshman highschool science, you would have learned about this wonderful thing that powers our universe in the most simplistic of ways. You would have learned about the electromagnetic spectrum of RADIATION. Xrays, infrared waves, gamma waves, radiowaves, ultraviolet waves (large amounts of which our friendly sun, mr. Sol, produces), and my personal favorite, visible light radiaton. Thats right. Without radiation, YOU WOULDNT BE ABLE TO EVEN FREAKIN SEE ANYTHING. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
My question is simple now. For all those who oppose even small doses of radiation, do you ACTUALLY know what it is? Do you know and clearly understand a near dictionary definition of it? Could you explain it to a child in full confidence? In case you dont know, radiation is simply waves of photons, operating at different wavelengths and energy levels, and background radiation is just a photonic wave the size of our universe.
Photons are bundles of energy that travel at the speed of light. They have no mass, but have momentum because they travel at the fastest speed possible in the known universe. Radiation is simply pure energy, without which nothing could exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
Heres the real kicker to all you greenpeace kids though. Heat. Warm, caring, lovely, life producing heat, is a thing called thermal radiation. Every atom contains a specific amont of photons, or heat, or radiation. Without this radiation, an element would reach “absolute zero”, or zero Kelvin on the kelvin scale.
Heat is energy in the atom, and energy cannot ever sit still, so the atom vibrates, giving off thermal energy to vent out the build up of potnetial energy (heat) into kinetic energy (see thermal transfer, or thermodynamics). Without a constant source of radiation energy, an atom would cease to exist, though zero kelvin is physically impossible due to background radiation. Without radiation, this discussion could not even exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation, see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero
Do you enjoy seeing things and not living in total darkness? I do. Visible light is the only form of electromegnetic radiation we can see, and I must say, it is rather nice to be able to see things. That light bulb above is SPEWING RADIATION ALL OVER YOU. So is your computer screen, and your friendly sun, Mr. Sol, who spits out enough radiation to cook you from a couple thousand miles away in nano-seconds. The stars you see at night are visble light waves that are going through you at the speed of light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum
The US has THE most effiecient nulear reactors in the world. 20% of our grid is nucear and we produce the most nuclear power in the world by far. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country (take percentage of nuclear power compared to energy capacity, we far exceed china, who uses roughly 80% coal power). US HEPA reactors operate at 99.995% efficiency (highest in the world). We are currently looking into Laser Separation for enrihing uranium and thorium core reactors instead of conventional uranium core.
We have the technology, we have the know how, we have the ability and the science to back it all up. Lets not let it go to waste because American media said we should.
Ok, all of the above notwithstanding, here we are, march 15 2011, and I’m watching CNN coverage of the impending nuclear catastrophe in japan. No one today is having an academic discussion about ‘safe’ levels.
Of course not, Rick. Safe levels of radiation simply don’t keep people glued to the screen. But things like “some radiation has been released and nobody knows just how catastrophic this might become” certainly do. Radiation levels in Tokyo right now are about 1/3 of normal radiation levels inside the US Capitol Building, hopefully that is context enough to show you how ridiculous the reporting on this matter has been.
Jack, I found this article of yours via google and enjoyed it, along with the comments. I googled “granite and capitol” because I was generally aware that people experience relatively elevated doses of radiation there (as opposed to what I experience at the set of places I visit on a regular basis in my mundane life) – and I don’t ever remember anyone complaining about it or worrying about it.
I also don’t ever remember seeing camera crews from all the major news outlets descending on the Capitol to draw attention to the plight of the poor souls forced to grind out their workdays there under the pall of death emanating from the menacing rock all around them.
But I was hoping to quantify the dosage and/or at least compare it to what someone in Tokyo is experiencing today (you seemed to have answered that last request above). I’m looking for an article or web page I can cite as a reference regarding natural radiation at the Capitol.
This page gets my confidence up that I’m right to tell others in my circle that nuclear power is still THE way to go, but I was looking for something a little more definitive about the Capitol: Thousands of people have streamed through there and even worked there for years and decades! I think it makes the point very succinctly.
Thanks in advance.
Thank you Matt. After being bombarded by these hysterical headlines over the past few days, comments like yours give me hope that there are enough intellient people out there that we might be able to prevent this event from doing catastrophic damage to national energy policy.
Actual dose from working in the US capital building is an additional 85 mRem/yr. Here is a good link for some basics on radiation in the Capitol and elsewhere.
Moi aussi. Regardless of your particular slant, this comment thread is full of insightful, or at least considered, commentary. Can’t say the same of most comment threads out there on the web.
Forgot to mention this: I wonder if there has been any study into the correlation of aggregate hours spent in Congress and the level of political discourse therein?
I don’t believe you. Not for a minute. Take this into account: Your job depends on this information to be true. If radiation from these reactors was proven dangerous, you and everyone in the industry would be out of a job. Hundreds of thousands of people world wide would be out of a job. Think about it. An entire industry bankrupt, a lot of lives indangered, and a lot of heads would roll.
Don’t you think they would work pretty hard to mislead the public, and yourself, into believing it is safe? When you have money like GE, it’s pretty easy to pay off congressmen into voting for things that the majority of the public do not want.
It is very possible, and if you are unwilling to admit even that, then I’m afraid there is little chance of you ever waking up.
Highly educated scientists once said Agent Orange was fine. Highly educated scientists once said the world is flat. Highly educated scientists once taught that bloodletting cures most illnesses.
Boy, were they wrong.
And boy, you could be wrong too.
I’m not going to speculate as to how educated the flat-worlders of yesteryear were, but I’m willing to bet it’s on par with the antinuclear doom and gloomers.
I’d have to be insane to work where I do and live where I do if I thought there was the slightest chance of what your saying being true. My parents, my brother, my newborn baby niece, and a dozen other members of my extended family live within 10 miles of my Mark 1 model containment reactor and I sleep soundly at night knowing that they are all perfectly safe.
My job absolutely dose NOT depend on Fukushima. The entire nuclear industry didn’t get fired after Three Mile Island or Chernobyl and that’s not going to happen because of Fukushima despite the knee-jerk reactions of some politicians who don’t know what they’re talking about.
But I can tell you there is an industry with hundreds of thousands of members, governments in their pockets, and trillions in assets that are very threatened by my line of work and it’s the same people who poured oil into the gulf by the millions of barrels last summer – remember them? They kill 25,000 Americans every year in the form of respiratory illness weather you believe me or not. I think your anger and fear is woefully misplaced and the folks at BP and Chevron want it to stay that way.
Wherever there’s any potential hint of a political angle, one should beware. Engineers, however, are generally highly reactive to political pressure, at least as long as they are still ‘engineers’ and not ‘professional managers’. This is my experience from 25 years experience in finance at a hydro utility, but working with professional engineers daily.
Everbody seems to be telling me how safe it is.
Nobody is giving me a current exposure level or map.
I have spent over an hour trying to get recorded levels and avarage background levels and I get nothing.
Yes, i have the same problem. You cannot get any real information. And any information just aimed at keeping you under control, such as “there is no immediate threat” is simply not the truth. After all, is deadly cancer in a couple of years an immediate threat? No, because you will keep on paying taxes for a couple more years. I want to see those pro-nuke activists go work at Fukushima and eat spinach, if there is no real harm.
@Живко—In some respects I can understand your cynical view, I often find myself feeling the same way. It is difficult, and often unwise, to be openly trusting of any and every source. That’s why you have to ask questions, weigh your options, and form sound opinions with the information you can acquire.
However, many of the “pro-nuke activists” you speak of are employees within the nuclear industry. They are folks who put their money (or spinach) where their mouth is to work in these facilities, which do in fact have a great safety track record, to bring a steady and vital power supply to our infrastructure. I highly doubt that if the work was that unsafe so many highly skilled men and women would be eager to pursue this kind of career. To that end, please keep in mind the brave workers and emergency responders and Fukushima who were willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done to keep a bad situation from getting worse.
Живко,
I DO work inside of a nuclear power plant and I DID swallow a pill containing 18,500,000,000 picocuries of I-131 three months ago (prescribed by a Doctor & likely saved my life).
I’ve been exposed to more radiation in the past year than 999,999 out of 100,000 people in this world. So I have as much right to speak on this topic as anyone else.
Regardless of tax revenues(?) the people of Japan are safe. Any credible study that is performed in Japan in years to come (there will be many) will prove this.
BTW, try Brazil Nuts. Besides delicious, they’re naturally more radioactive than the Spinach near Fukushima is right now.
Is there any difference to human health between the radiation from granite, like the Capitol Building and the radioactive iodine released from the Fukushima plant? I was under the impression that dust from the reactor settles on things like grass and spinach; after being ingested the iodine collects in the thyroid gland. This process implies accumulation but the four-day half-life seems like it would mitigate any lower level exposure; which is why the Japanese government is not stopping all food exports from nearby the reactor. But I’m still not sure if I understand this very well.
About background radiation: I’ve gone past a number of nuclear power stations in Japan and the radiation levels are quite low in the vicinity. The public displays around one reactor showed something like 0.045 microsieverts / hr. How does this compare to USA / international radiation levels near plants?
Cell Phones are probably the worst killer, not the radiation, but the lack of focus while driving.
Could it be that liberals receive higher doses of radiation at the capital and that’s what’s affecting their brains?
Interesting theory, but both parties along with the independents work in the same fields.
i think what greenpeace and so on mean is, that every gamma-, beta-, alpha-particle in principle has enough energy to ionize parts of your dna for example. so in principle a single particle could even harm you if odds are against you.
as you correctly pointed out we are surrounded by radioactivity all the time – why are no people dying because of this? they certainly do. people die of cancer all the time – the thing is, there are much more significant factors than natural radiation, but if the dose was higher, eg if we didnt have the ozone layer, cosmic radiation would kill us all
another point: what you’re saying is partly correct but it’s certainly no argument for nuclear power. i don’t like the fact that antinuclear statements are often based on making people afraid of it instead of explaining.
i’m from germany and Chernobyl as well as Fukushima had big impact on politics here, the reason for this is, that we have directly encountered problems: although I live pretty far from Chernobyl (~2000 km), there are still many regions here, where hunting is prohibited because they are contaminated. and it will stay that way for very long. and there will be areas like that in japan as well..
> “nuclear energy holds the key to energy independence”
Haha where do you think Uranium comes from? As far as I know the US is importing almost all of it.
http://www.fas.org/ssp/docs/020500-heu/app_b.htm
Compared to its energy potential it’s cheap – but for how long? china is building many nuclear power plants
>”economic growth”
ask Ukraine, they still spend 5-7% of their budget on this single reactor
>”environmental stewardship”
what about nuclear waste, toxic waste? it’s not like it stops radiating as soon as you’ve taken it out of your reactor…
and again: ask Ukraine
>”national security”
something like Fukushima doesn’t necessarily have to be an accident. The US are usually aware of the fact that there are evil powers out there who are very angry at them.
Nuclear power is not a technology which solves all energy problems.
You mean that if the Earth didn’t have a magnetic field. Ozone does nothing to stop cosmic rays.
No, hunting is prohibited because the Germans are superstitious. There is no rational justification for such prohibitions.
The particular uranium that you are talking about comes from Russian nuclear weapons, so these “imports” are from former Soviet weapons stockpiles. Perhaps you do not think that destroying nuclear weapons by generating electricity is a good thing, but I think that you will find yourself in the minority there.
It’s not as if uranium is a very rare element. It’s about as common in the Earth’s crust as tin. The oceans are literally full of it, with billions of tons of uranium dissolved in sea water throughout the world.
Besides, the US already has enough uranium and plutonium in its so-called “waste” to power itself for centuries, if the right technology is used.
That is your strawman. Have fun with it.
“i think what greenpeace and so on mean is, that every gamma-, beta-, alpha-particle in principle has enough energy to ionize parts of your dna for example. so in principle a single particle could even harm you if odds are against you.”
I could say with equal validity, “that every sewing pin in principle has enough sharpness to penetrate parts of your eye for example. so in principle a single sewing pin could even blind you if odds are against you.”
I COULD say that – IF my interest was in obfuscation, fear-mongering, and half-truths – the stock-in-trade of Greenpeace et all.
>”You mean that if the Earth didn’t have a magnetic field. Ozone does nothing to stop cosmic rays.”
ozone absorbs uv-radiation. photons are not charged so the magnetic field is irrelevant for them, it’s protecting against charged subatomic particles, which is what is meant by cosmic radiation (and has nothing to do with radioactivity sorry for mixing that up)
>”“waste” to power itself for centuries, if the right technology is used.”
do you mean breeder reactors?
>”enough sharpness to penetrate parts of your eye for example”
my eye is not penetrated by sewing pins at the moment, whereas it is absorbing radiation all the time.
But as i said there are much more significant factors, I’m not supporting their position that you should be afraid of all doses of radiation…
>”No, hunting is prohibited because the Germans are superstitious. There is no rational justification for such prohibitions.”
The maximum permissible value in the European Union (and not just Germany) is 600 Bq/kg.
In these areas (Bayrischer Wald) average values of ~25.000 Bq/kg are measured in mushrooms today. In boar meat the average today is ~6700 Bq/kg. This exceeds the standards almost everywhere.
Oh whatever!! Look, assuming that all of those becquerels in the meat are due to Cesium-137 from the fallout of Chernobyl (almost certainly some of the radiation is due to naturally occurring potassium-40), then the lifetime mortality risk from eating an entire kilogram of boar meat would be 4.5e-6. This is a very small risk. To put it in perspective, it’s roughly the same risk of cancer that results from smoking just six cigarettes.
Last time I checked, Germany has not outlawed cigarettes. In fact, it still has a substantial amount of smokers, as I recall from my last flight through the Munich airport
. This is why I say that the restriction on hunting is the equivalent of a “superstition.”
When Germany outlaws smoking in addition to hunting “radioactive” boar, then we can talk.
it’s easy to check where the radioactivity comes from looking at the energy spectrum. the values are given in radiocaesium bq/kg.
it’s just prohibited to sell the meat and that is NOT A GERMAN LAW but in the whole of Europe. I doubt that I was allowed to sell it in the US.
for hunting you need a license anyway, if you want you can eat as many mushrooms and boars as you want, like with smoking. there are people who would eat much more than a kg…
i totally agree that smoking is a bigger health risk here than fallout from chernobyl. referring to your observation in munich the percentage of smokers in germany is below worldwide average.
wow you almost make me a patriot.
don’t get me wrong, germany is not all great
>”For all those who oppose even small doses of radiation, do you ACTUALLY know what it is?”
Sorry you don’t know either.
You refer to photons when you’re talking about gamma-radiation. it is photons of very high energy (= very high frequency). you’re right that it’s basically some kind of light, but that doesn’t mean it’s harmless. The more energy the photon has the more harmful it is. You can get a sunburn from UV light, x-rays already carry enough energy to ionize, because they can transfer their energy to an electron and make it leave it’s atomic orbit. and the photons emitted as a result of nuclear fission have much more energy so they can even fission other nuclei
but that’s just one part of the dangers of radioactivity. beta-radiation has nothing to do with photons, these are electrons.
In Japan they found plutonium outside the reactor (as a result of using MOX in block 3) which is an alpha-emitter, meaning it emits He++ ions which can be stopped even using a sheet of paper, but are very harmful if absorbed by your body over a longer period of time, which is the case if you eat PL-contaminated food or inhale contaminated particles.
You’re probably right that the US has some of the most modern reactors. But Japan was considered to have the safest reactors as well.
if you think that the US technology is so much better than the one from the rest of the world that such accidents cannot happen in your country then you’re just naive. here in germany they started checking the NPPs under new restrictions considering not one danger but two at the same time (like it happened in Japan with a tsunami and an earthquake – which is not such an unlikely combination, also for california). it looks like most of germany’s reactors would fail under these circumstances and so do many of the US reactors.
Having knowledge on a field is no argument to use it. Instead, the US would be well advised trying to gain knowledge on fields where they lack behind.
Oh really? I tell you what: let’s take two lab rats, expose one to photons with an energy of 2 eV each, expose the other to photons with a much, much smaller energy of 10 microeV each, and turn up the power that is supplied to the two photon generators.
Care to bet on which rat dies first?
The relatively small amount of MOX fuel in Unit 3 almost certainly had nothing to do with it. All nuclear reactors produce plutonium as they operate. If there has been even a tiny amount of fuel failure, one would expect to find trace amounts of plutonium (it’s easy enough to detect), and that’s what they found in Japan: trace amounts. If you’re going to go around correcting other people, you should at least get your facts straight.
Well, you should be relieved that Germany does not experience tsunamis very often, being a mostly landlocked country and all. Or do your “nuclear experts” seriously think that 14-meter-high tsunamis are a viable threat in Germany.
Such as the prevalence of tsunamis in Bavaria, I suppose. Sorry, but no thank you.
“Care to bet on which rat dies first?”
What do you want to say? Do you want to deny that x-rays are more dangerous than visible light? of course it depends on how much is absorbed…
And we’re talking about MeV here.
“you should at least get your facts straight.”
yes you’re right I was misinformed about that. thanks
You probably know that Pl is already quite dangerous in trace amounts.
“prevalence of tsunamis in Bavaria”
I never mentioned these – i was referring to combinations of factors in general. These haven’t been thought of in the past and are now because that’s what japan has told us. I was referring to the thread of earthquakes in California which you cannot deny either
Only that your simplistic model of how electromagnetic radiation works is terribly wrong.
Personally, I would put my money on the rat exposed to bright orange light rather than the rat put in the microwave oven.
No, I don’t know that, since it isn’t scientifically valid.
Plutonium in significant amounts is a health concern, just as lead or arsenic in significant amounts is a health concern. The region of Japan that we’re talking about already had plutonium in trace amounts in its soil because of Pacific nuclear weapons testing in the mid-twentieth-century. I didn’t hear anyone crying very loudly about that before this accident.
Trace amounts are nothing to worry about.
They don’t have to be breeder reactors. A substantial amount of energy can be recovered from so-called “nuclear waste” simply by re-enriching the recovered uranium-235 in the “spent” nuclear fuel and by burning the recovered plutonium as MOX fuel.
This will provide a substantial amount of energy.
The remainder of the energy can be recovered by using the uranium-238 (the majority of the “spent” fuel) in reactors with a much harder neutron spectrum. This does not necessarily mean “breeding” in the traditional sense, but reactors can be designed and built to make use of this material, resulting in wastes with much shorter half-lives.
>”Only that your simplistic model of how electromagnetic radiation works is terribly wrong.”
“The more … the …” statements in such a context always indicate a simplification. I did not publish any model of em-radiation, I just tried to make an easily understandable statement. There are many dangers that I did not mention
>”Plutonium in significant amounts is a health concern”
The chemical toxicity of Plutonium is in the order of arsenic (tens of mg) but the health risk through it’s radiation when inhaling is much higher. Some micrograms cause cancer. 40 nanograms are sufficient to reach the limit for the annual inhalation by workers. By “trace amount” I meant “very small amount”, not “insignificant amount” – sorry if my language is imprecise I’m no native speaker.
Correct me, but I fear the shift to more dangerous technologies that will be used when conventional methods become uneconomical. Not just breeders but also other technologies that produce “significant” amounts of plutonium.
>”I didn’t hear anyone crying very loudly about that before this accident.”
Oh yes, I did. Hysteria about radiation may be new to the US, in Europe green movements go back to the 60s. The positive aspect is that it has grown up and lead to acceptable alternatives. I know a quite big housing area which produces more energy than it consumes only using renewable energy sources. On the short term it’s expensive and a lot of research has to be done, but I think the money is well spent considering the long-term risks and costs nuclear energy results in.
People have to be informed and if they still fear nuclear power (even if it’s just because they don’t understand it) then it’s a democratic decision (here I must say that I’m not jealous of the mass media in the US).
Do you know how many substances are carcinogenic at the levels you describe? Do you have any idea?
Look, I realize that you’re some sort of German “Green” who wants to shut down nuclear and everything else and rely on so-called “renewables” for energy.
As an American, all I can say is … more power to you! I wish you luck!
Hey, if you want to commit economic suicide by relying on solar panels to power your factories, that’s your business. We in the US will be happy to pick up the slack. We’re hurting for jobs over here. If you take Europe down with you, so much the better.
By the way, where is Germany getting its electricity these days, while it conducts its “nuclear witch hunt”? Could this electricity be coming from nuclear plants across the border, in places like France? Yes, I believe it is.
Fabi – “I know a quite big housing area which produces more energy than it consumes only using renewable energy sources.”
I would appreciate it if you could share with us the renewable energy mix, the backup power source or storage method, and the feedin tariff rate, incentives, and tax relief involved. Also the capacity factor and service life and maintenance requirements.
I envy your bilingual capabilities – it is another area where, unless they were born into a non-Anglophone family, Americans lag behind many other nations.
>”Do you know how many substances are carcinogenic at the levels you describe? Do you have any idea?”
No. tell me
>”some sort of German “Green” who wants to shut down nuclear and everything else”
No. I’m no blind ideologist and in discussions with them I always had the “how do you want to realise” part. But I think the time has come where one has to take the green alternatives seriously. not more not less. i’m not saying we should commit economic suicide but start planning long-term. to me nuclear power is a bridge technology.
>”If you take Europe down with you, so much the better.”
why do you want Europe to be taken down?
>”where is Germany getting its electricity these days”
it’s an open secret. the up to now more pro-nuclear government has changed its opinion knowing that they would lose votes in landtag elections. so they started a moratorium, meaning they stopped all NPPs until all of them are checked under new restrictions. if they pass, they will be switched on again.
generally germany is exporting electricity.
atomikrabbit>”renewable energy mix, the backup power source or storage method, and the feedin tariff rate, incentives, and tax relief involved”
the reason they did it was that they wanted to create a mass market for the panels which worked as the price for solar panels has dropped drastically in recent years. the price you get at the moment is 28 eurocent/kwh, but it will drop in future, which is ok considering that the solar panels are much cheaper now.
phew – sorry i think i don’t have the time to give a satisfying answer.
They have an english website which is quite informative:
http://www.vauban.de/info/abstract.html
I talked to guy who lives there saying that he has running costs (including heating, water, electricity) for his house of about 100 Eur per year. That’s about what other people here pay per month.
solar panels have been subsidised massively by fixing a price you get for the electricity you produce with it. this has been criticised a lot because the don’t produce that much energy compared to what they cost – especially because germany is not as sunny as spain
storage method: there is a provider which has risen from the anti-nuclear movement in the 80s which does not use nuclear power, not even to pump up the water in the hydroelectric power plants at night.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1553491,00.html
(there are better and newer articles, it’s hard to find some in english)
they cannot save themselves from customers now because of fukushima.
experts say billions have to be invested in the network in the years to come
Fabi – Thank you for the links. Too bad I don’t speak German. As you said, the second one was 6 years old, so the situation may have changed since then.
It is an interesting social/technological experiment Germany (and apparently the American northeast) is conducting on itself. It will be even more interesting to see how the German export-driven economy fares vs. nuclear-powered societies such as France, and increasingly China, over the next decades.
As long as you have really thought about the extra expense and the real-life consequences of going “renewable”, including increased dependence on Russian natural gas – go for it.
I think the real reason is one most associated with the 1960s – it makes you “feel good” to do it. People since the beginning of time have made decisions on emotion, not logic.
In some ways, the atomic power industry has brought this upon themselves by their aloofness and refusal to aggressively market the advantages of their product. I believe they unquestionably won the technological battle, but forfeited the public relations war by never so much as fielding a platoon onto the media battlefield.
The main problem here is a lack of understanding of science and health. Yes we are exposed to radiation on a daily basis, but this doesn’t prove it’s safe. Disease is impacted by multiple factors, genetics, age, exposure to virus, synergistic exposures to other organic chemicals and so on. You and I might be exposed to the same amount of radiation and I will develop cancer years later and you will not be impacted.
But if you need convincing about the dangers of radiation–
check out these photos from Chernobyl and the stories of those who live and work in the exclusionary zones even now, years later, people are still being born with mutations.
Difficult to say what amount is safe for any one person especially children and developing fetuses.
Mel,
The fact is, the rate of birth defects in the region surrounding Chernobyl are no higher than anywhere else in the world. There is absolutely no science or legitimate medical research that ties those deformed babies to Chernobyl. Flashing pictures of these kids is the dirtiest trick in the antinuke playbook.
I recomend these for legitmate research on radiation health effects:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11340&page=1
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/public_health_research.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/ocasdose.html
From one who lives in energy-starved India, where the US expects to set up around 12000 MW of new N-power plants by 2020 using the ‘latest’ American N-technology:
1. Why has the US not set up a single new N-power plant since 1979 – especially if its N-technology is so wonderful and safe?
2. It’s safe to assume that radiation kills much slower than a bullet to the brain. So how in heck do we ever hope to compile ‘accurate’ data or establish ‘clear’ correlations between radiation and mortality? Is it possible that many of those suckers who are getting getting run over by buses and trains and things daily are in fact actually dying of radiation…but they simply never knew it nor will we ever come to know about it because the cause of death in each case is so ‘obvious’?
3. I’m all for N-power…so long as it’s a fusion reaction 93 million miles away and I have electromagnetic shields and a dark skin protecting me from getting fried cell by cell.
1. That’s what we’re trying to fix here. The short answer is politics. In 50 years of operating over 100 reactors in the US, there has not been a single human death, injury, or illness. So I agree with your assessment that nuclear technlogy is wonderful and safe.
2. All compiled data to date indicates that radiation is actually far LESS harmful than originally beleived (despite what the activists want you to think). The thousands of deaths that were hypothesized after Chernobyl simply never happened. The World Health Organization now says fewer than 60 people died as a result of the Chernobyl accident. Those people who were hit by buses were NOT dying from radiation.
3. What’s hapening in the sun is nuclear fussion, not fission. Even still, that ball of fussion in the sky is giving you more radiation than any nuclear power plants. It’s far more likely to hurt you than a power reactor.
Thanks, Jack, for the candour.
It’s interesting to learn that ” All compiled data to date indicates that radiation is actually far LESS harmful than originally beleived.” I’d be grateful for a couple of links to this data if available. My (very limited) understanding has been that from Nagasaki onwards, the maximum ‘safe’ levels of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) have been steadily scaled DOWN by IAEA till they are tiny fractions of what they were in the 1950s?
I’m a little wary about your proposition that the sun is far more likely to hurt me than a N-power reactor. So long as the sun remains 93 million miles away and I have my ionospheric coat up there as a shield and enough common sense not to get sunstroke, I’ll live to be 75. And the sun will live to be 12 billion years old. To me, the sun is much more predictable than what we’ve got going on and what we can ‘control’ here on Earth…that to me is really the lesson from Japan, from Hanford and Three Mile Island, from Chernobyl and Sellafield.
The Hanford reactors fouled up the entire Columbia river, as the Mayak reactors fouled up the Techa for decades. The sun doesn’t do that!
And to labour the point about that poor bus victim …how can we be SURE he was NOT harbouring an early-stage radiation-induced cancer unless we do an autopsy on him that specifically looks for the near-invisible but potentially life-threatening presence of cancer? I don’t know about the US; but here in India if a man gets run over by a bus we declare the cause of death to be the bus…and no sir, we do not investigate for the possible presence of cancer in the deceased.
How many sun burns have you gotten in your life? I’m pasty white, so I’ve gotten more than I can count. How adversely have I been affected by a nuclear power plant? Absolutely nothing to speak of – and there were at least six nuclear plants that I can think of off the top of my head that I lived within 100 miles of for 25 years, and nope – still no negative health effects.
You could be dying of minute tumors brought on by skin cancer when that bus hits you. So your bus-cancer point is still pretty weak.
Not to mention that the Earth has had naturally occurring fission reactions.
Ghatotkacha – This should get you started.
Radiation Effects Research Foundation – studying the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors since 1945: http://www.rerf.jp/library/archives_e/libetc.html
Official US Nuclear Regulatory Commission site: http://nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation.html
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (not known as a pro-nuclear organization) recently published “Wildlife and Chernobyl: The scientific evidence for minimal impacts”: http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/wildlife-and-chernobyl-the-scientific-evidence-minimal-impacts
Thanks Jason for the well-made points…
I guess sunburns don’t kill…or do they?
No dispute re. your argument that cancer could be caused by old Sol or even by cosmic rays originating from, say, Betelgeuse! But that’s just the point, isn’t it? Both the pro-Nukes and anti-Nukes seem to be in agreement that cancers ARE caused by radiation; but the former argue very convincingly that so-called ‘natural radiation’ is as likely (or even more??!!) likely to cause cancers than a N-power plant, while the latter argue equally convincingly that the global rise in incidence of cancers since the 1950s is directly attributable to radioactive fallout from 600 megatons-equivalent of atmospheric N-tests along with the fallout of accidents, leaks and other ‘incidents’ in N-power plants.
And the most wonderful thing is, it’s impossible to prove either side right or wrong…because that’s the very nature of radiation (silent, invisible particles zipping around at reasonable fractions of/up to the speed of light) and the way radiation harms or kills (a gamma ray originating in Orion or Fukushima could strike someone in Chennai, India or Bangor, Maine…and just might set off an incredibly complex chain of events at the genetic and cellular level whose effects manifest years, perhaps decades later…
In short, I do believe no-one on earth really knows – or can ever know – whether a particular cancer was ’caused’ by radiation from ‘natural sources’ or radiation from N-plants. This very uncertainty is being played up by both pro- and anti-Nukers for their respective causes.
I’ll take my chances with Sol and Betelgeuse, thank you..as have all life forms for 1.8 billion years. And I’ll try and stay out of the way of buses too
The global spike in cancer since the 1950s is due to industrialization, population explosion, and a rapid increase in life expectancy. In 1949, most people didn’t live long enough to ever die from cancer. As the world’s population ages, it’s inevitable that cancer rates will increase. While it’s proven that Chernobyl caused several thousand cases of thyroid cancer, only 15 of those were fatal and this is an extreme example that is nowhere near enough to affect global averages.
Basically, your theary of global cancer rates and nuclear power is no more grounded in science than a big foot sighting. This doesn’t stop antinukes from falsely claiming otherwise, but then again, antinukes have never been beholden to science, so why would they start now?
Sunburns do kill, actually. It can cause death rather quickly from a severe radiation burn if it’s bad enough or you can die later in life, slowly from skin cancer.
Jack,
First, the theory about linkages between global cancer rates and nuclear power is not MY theory. It’s a theory that’s been argued with as much vehemence and conviction by the anti-N folks as you (and other pro-N folks) argue the theory that there’s no such linkage. I and a couple of billion ordinary people have to listen to both sides and choose…and right now both of you sound equally (un)convincing.
An example: there’s a rather troublesome contradiction hiding in your two statements:
1. “While it’s proven that Chernobyl caused several thousand cases of thyroid cancer, only 15 of those were fatal and this is an extreme example that is nowhere near enough to affect global averages…”
2. “Basically, your theary of global cancer rates and nuclear power is no more grounded in science than a big foot sighting. ”
My layman’s query is this: If science has ‘proven’ that Chernobyl fallout (comprising stuff like strontium-90, iodine-131 and cesium-137) led to thousands of thyroid cancers, why is it ‘unscientific’ of me to consider the possibility that the fallout from 20 years of N-atmospheric tests together with careless release of radio-wastes from N-power plants – fallout which comprises precisely the same stuff as Chernobyl, namely strontium-90, iodine-131 and cesium-137! – might have caused the global rise in incidences of cancer from the mid-1960s?
I’m old enough to recall that Project Sunshine (under which the US and UK collected thousands of human bones from across the world in the 1950s through to the 1960s to analyse them for traces of radioactive fallout from N-tests) confirmed that strontium-90 has spread across the entire face of the planet; that today you and I and every living creature carry traces of strontium-90 in our bones and teeth (assuming we have any left)
.
Now I don’t know whether any scientist or doctor can ever determine whether or when radioactive decay from that strontium-90 in my bones will give me cancer. Who knows, maybe they’ll say strontium-90 is GOOD for my bones. Maybe I’ll be happily run over by a bus before I get cancer.
But Project Sunshine alone is enough to make me very skeptical of any claims that N-fallout is limited, or that it’s harmless.
“Now I don’t know whether any scientist or doctor can ever determine whether or when radioactive decay from that strontium-90 in my bones will give me cancer. ”
Actually they can. Quite easily actually as Stronium 90 and it’s affect on human health has been studied extensively since the cold war.
The average radiation dose people receive from Sr90 (mostly form weapons testing as you pointed out) in their bones is about 0.3% of that which you receive from natural sources. The minimum Sr90 exposure that has ever demonstrated any measureable increase in the liklihood of bone cancer is about 300,000 times that amount directly ingested or inhaled. Source.
Chernobyl released more than 200,000 curies of Stronium 90 into the envrionment. The only measured affect cancer rates in the region surrounding Chernobyl has been Thyroid cancer which is caused by I-131. The rate of all other forms of cancer, including those that would result from a massive Strontium-90 exposure, have been unaffected. Source
There are no anecdotal arguments or what if scenarios that change this.
You’re thinking qualitatively. To test this hypothesis of yours, it is necessary to think quantitatively, and an examination of just the orders of magnitude is sufficient to demonstrate that the hypothesis is extremely unlikely to be true.
Worldwide average annual radiation doses from natural and man-made sources are shown in this figure. Compared to natural sources, the dose to the public from nuclear weapons testing and nuclear power (including Chernobyl) is tiny. Furthermore, the remaining dose from nuclear explosions and Chernobyl is now negligible, since the most dangerous stuff has already decayed away.
If you want to pick a culprit, then radiation from medical procedures seems to be a more logical choice, since it has increased substantially since the fifties. Nevertheless, even this is a rather weak explanation.
You’re overlooking a few more rational explanations. First, you haven’t considered the upsurge of cigarette smoking that followed each the two world wars, which peaked in the mid-1960′s in the US. Cancer from smoking takes decades to appear, meaning that smoking-related cancers in the US should have continued to increase well into the 1980′s or later. (Worldwide, smoking rates have continued to increase – PDF.) Next, as Jack has mentioned, people are simply living longer, and more people are living long enough to die of cancer instead of being killed earlier by some other disease that was more prevalent in years past.
Thanks, Jack, for the clarification on Sr-90 and the authoritative source doc!
And thank you too, Brian…
You liar lobbyist! Those are not facts! You’re trying to say that having, for example, mercury in your body (due to pollution and contamination) is ok because mercury is a “natural” occurring element!
This is simply almighty delirium …
Radiation exposure is not as simple as you would have it Jack.
What is a safe level of plutonium if it has been ingested? Or inhaled? Is it different from radium?
Chernobyl is no longer an unsafe place to live?
Okay i have one thing to maybe help with some or create more discussion and one question that I’ve been wondering.
First part is do to my back ground in nuclear power being that i worked as a Nuclear Mechanic in the navy Shiny pipe side and i am all for nuclear power as a safe clean source of energy along with other sources like wind and other natural safe resources. part of i think what is being missed in explaining some of the harms of radiation is you have to point out the types of radiation and what they do and how they are shielded. i think that can help explain why some is dangerous in large doses and other forms are very negligible and easily shielded also. talking about alpha, gamma, fast and slow neutron, beta that type.
i did like reading through very interesting. the one question i have is and tell me if I’m wrong i have seen studies done on solar panels and what there harms verses good are and the only thing i can see as health concerns in the study are the chemicals used in making them and the disposal or recycling if possible and at there end of life there proper disposal so as not to leak chemicals into soil. what i was wondering and might be incorrect thinking is after all of the absorption of the suns radiation that it converts to energy after its absorption ability is negligible would the panel not have some level of radiation it would be emitting and if so is it just very little to not be harmful or need disposed of properly as rad waste. thanks for the help
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